UNITE stands up for working women on centenary of International Women

UNITE stands up for working women on centenary of International Women’s Day

UNITE stands up for working women on centenary of International Women’s Day

Speaking on the hundredth anniversary of International Women’s Day (Tuesday, 8 March), Diana Holland, Unite’s assistant general secretary for equalities condemned the Tory-led coalition government’s divisive agenda of cuts.

She said: “This government’s discriminatory, divisive agenda of cuts and changes will disproportionately hit women, the poorest and most vulnerable hardest. While this government is setting women back, Unite stands up for working women and for equality.

“Unite women are active, involved, angry and deeply concerned about the future for our children and young women and men. In workplaces across our communities, Unite women are saying no to shameful, discriminatory cuts to services, to equalities and to jobs.

“With eleven times more millionaires than mothers in the Tory-led coalition government, their distorted priorities mean the poorest and most vulnerable are hit hardest, and women and children come first only when it comes to cuts and closures.

“There is an alternative, and it doesn’t include a VAT hike, attacking the Post Office or women’s state pension, charging to use the Child Support Agency, or abolishing free fruit in schools.

Over the last hundred years of struggle, women have won the right to vote and have won the right to equal pay, ending the legal justification for treating women as second class citizens.

Diana Holland added: “Over the next hundred years, we must end the second class treatment itself and end women’s poverty and the under-representation of women everywhere.

“That struggle continues today, not in a hundred years’ time. As it says in the song ‘we will march not just for bread, but for roses too’. Women of all ages deserve nothing less.”

ENDS

For further information contact Ashraf Choudhury in the Unite press office on 020 7420 8914 or 07980 224761.

Notes to Editors:

‘Bread and Roses’ was a song written as part of a women textile workers struggle for justice in 1910. Words: James Oppenheim, Music: Martha Coleman